transmission fluid leak

[millionknives]

Ok so I got my fuel system replaced as it was shot (determined in other thread) so I get about 20 miles into driving it again which seemed great.. apart from hard shifts.. then it starts smoking and having a LOT of trouble accelerating. Pull over, check it out, transmission fluid is so low that pressure can't be built anymore, thankfully a store isn't more then a mile away, get some and make it home, however I take a look underneth and find that fluid is dripping down the transmission pan, and the rear end, so is it the seals or what cause it works fine till it gets low if its the seals then it shouldn't be TOO hard to do right?

[Davescort97]

There are several places the tranny could be leaking fluid. It could be the seal on the pan, but it wouldn't instantly be making major loss. There is the seal on the back housing that the drive shaft goes into. There is the front seal on the input shaft. The shift modulator on the side is a vacuum operated control and it could be leaking through the diaphragm. The shift modulator is vacuum operated from the initake manifold. It could be saucking tranny fluid out and be burning it back through the intake manifold on the fuel system. So I would look at that first. Good luck to you.

[millionknives]

Alright well the seals weren't all too good, the C.V. Driveshaft died out and I need a new one, sadly there's none around here and I have to have a custom replacement made to fit with ujoints, thats where the leak was coming from however still don't know whats with the hard shifting could the driveshaft be the reason behind that?

[Davescort97]

Hard shifting (how many miles do you have on it?) could be from worn out clutch packs in the transmissiion. There are 5 to 6 fiber discs with 5 to 6 steel discs in between. They are squeezed together by a hydraulic piston that operates off of the fluid pressure. A new tranny has about 18 thousandths free play in the clutch pack. As the fiber discs wear out play can get to be as much as quart inch. Taking up this slack as it shifts makes it shift hard.

[millionknives]

Its got almost 68000 miles on the vehicle so I would expect the transmission to last about 15000-25000 more before it being bad my 86 mustang transmission had nearly a 140000 and that one I replaced with a tci for preformance and the orig had nothing wrong with it...